Haryana is state where maximum people belongs to Jat Community and Congress is looking to build himself as a Jat party in Haryana. If the party wins the upcoming Haryana elections with its Jat chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda as the poll mascot, then the party’s gambit to give up its non-Jat identity in the face of a severely divided Opposition and a damaged Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) would have paid off, as it promises to do. In keeping with this plan, the party has nominated a sizeable number of Jats to contest the October 13 assembly polls.Under Mr Hooda too the party is attempting to prevent an erosion of its non-Jat vote base. It has given 10 tickets each to Punjabis and Dalits, five to Yadvas, four each to Banias and Gurjars and nominal representation to other small groups. But, whether this strategy will be successful is difficult to say. The breakdown of vote share from the Lok Sabha results reveals that Congress’ show of strength was powered by the fragmentation of the opposition vote. Congress got just 41.77% of the votes. INLD and BJP bagged 12.09% of the votes each, BSP, which had only 4.98% of the votes in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, managed to secure over 15% and the new-formed HJC cornered 10%. Such a fragmentation is on the cards again with no alliance between INLD and BJP and even the BSP-HJC tie-up coming undone. However, a section of Congress is not willing to write off INLD, which is strong in the Hissar, Sirsa and Rohtak regions. Also, Hooda-baiters such as Union minister Kumari Shelja, state minister Kiran Choudhary and MP Rao Inderjit Singh could queer the pitch if not reigned in by the high command. However, if the Jats rally behind Congress in a block as they are expected to do, Mr Hooda’s poll claim of being “number one” might be heard for much longer than the duration of the election campaign.